Social apps are the worst for data, battery and performance hits, finds AVG

AVG has just released its latest quarterly report into the biggest offending apps when it comes to data consumption, battery sapping and performance draining. There are a number of familiar faces in the rankings, along with a few new entries since the last report.

AVG collects this data anonymously from its AVG AntiVirus & AVG Cleaner apps for Android, from users based in the US, UK and Australia. It then ranks software into four categories based on actual data collected from apps installed on devices. The chart below gives an overall summary of the worst offenders of apps started up by users:

Despite its relatively short burst usage profile, Snapchat replaces Facebook as the biggest performance draining app, due to its simultaneous use of WiFi, GPS information and your phone’s camera. In fact, Snapchat features in the top five in three of the four main categories that AVG investigated. Steaming apps, such as Spotify, obviously eat up quite a bit of data, but Google’s Chrome is actually the second worst app in this category. Notably, it is the only web browser to make its way into any of these categories.

Arguably the worst apps are those which run at start-up, rather than those started by the user, as these will continue to impact your device’s performance, data usage and battery life simply by booting your device up. Here’s AVG’s list:

It is here that we do see Facebook once again topping the rankings in three out of the four categories, as the worst culprit for performance impact, data usage and storage consumption. Fortunately it is not the worst app for battery performance, which is claimed by the Android firmware updater process and a selection of other Samsung applications. Social media clearly takes up quite a bit of data, but so does rival anti-virus firm Avast’s app and The Weather Channel app, both of which probably shouldn’t be using up so much background data.

AVG proposes a selection of fixes if you are worried about these apps bogging down your device. The company recommends cleaning out your browser history and cache files regularly, limiting your time spent with some apps and ensuring that your software is kept up to date to avoid services prompting you.

For a full look at the detailed report, click on the source link below.